Totnes Pound

Project summary

The Totnes Pound is currently a physical local currency backed by sterling and accepted in 70+ businesses in the town. It’s administered as part of the Transition Town Totnes initiative.

Project aim

To make sure that wealth stays in the community where it will can be used in a more conscientious way with lower carbon impact, lower ecological impact and higher resilience.

Why we’re doing it

A local economy is like a leaky bucket - wealth comes in and as soon as it is spent at a shop or business that has more connections outside Totnes than inside Totnes, that money disappears.

Local money doesn’t leak through the holes – it bounces around inside the local economy and maintains wealth. Local money helps us think about our local economy, enquiring where our money goes once we spend it and finding ways to keep it from leaking out.

If we use our money for production and consumption closer to home, we're going to pay more attention to how those products are made, and the waste streams that result from them. It's similar logic to the premise that the Bhopal disaster in India would not have happened if the battery factory had been in the back garden of the Chief Exec of Union Carbide.